Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Galton's Life 243 



restraint. But how are you going to get the better class workman to see that his checking the 

 size of his family may make matters easier for him, but is at the expense of the nation's future? 

 He is really unreachable by an assurance scheme, unless you could attach your health degree to 

 the proposals for old age pensions*. That appears to me a point worth thinking about. As I have 

 said elsewhere it seems to me that only socialistic measures can touch this population question. 

 Even if you can by moral suasion lead the better class artizans and the middle classes to see 

 that limitation of the family may be anti-social (and I believe it might be possible) how are you 

 going to check the unlimited production of the worse stocks t The " Neomalthusians " — as I 

 know from sad experience — abuse any one who like myself ventures to criticise their doctrine 

 of limitation, unless it be accompanied by the words "of the poor stocks first " ; but this abuse 

 is nothing to what one will arouse, if one ventures to assert that the huge charities providing 

 for the children of the incapable are a national curse and not a blessing ; that the " widow with 

 seven children all dependent upon her, husband a clerk who died of consumption aged 35," 

 and who seeks your aid to get her children into Reedham, is really a moral criminal and not an 

 object for pity. 



How can a health degree affect this source of rottenness ? I fear hardly at all. Your only 

 hope is to impress upon the few who really lead the nation, that the matter is one for legisla- 

 tion, that although we have got rid of Gilbert's Act, the workhouse and charity systems can 

 still be sapping our national vigour, when coupled with a wide-spread neomalthusianism — due 

 in the main to Bradlaugh — among the better working classes. 



What then it seems to me we mostly need at the present time, is some word in season, 

 something that will bring home to thinking men the urgency of the fertility question in this 

 country. There is no man who would be listened to in this matter in the same way as yourself. 

 You are known as one who set the whole scientific treatment of heredity going ; no one has 

 ever suspected you of being in the least a " crank," or having " views " to air. You will be 

 listened to and it will be recognised that you write out of a spirit of pure patriotism. There is 

 no one else, I believe, of whom this could be said, certainly no one who would be listened to 

 in the same way. Let us have (a) known facts of heredity, (b) influence of relative fertility on 

 national vigour, (c) actual statistics of birth rates of different stocks, and (d) proposed remedies 

 (only, if they include the health degree, tack it on to old age pensions) brought home to those who 

 think for the nation. Always sincerely yours, K. Pearson. 



If Biometrika be started Weldon and I want badly a paper however brief from you for No. 1. 



7, Well Road, Hampstead, N.W. February 1, 1901. 



My dear Mr Galton, I have several times planned to write and ask if I might come and see 

 you, and now you are off before I have done so ! I have been " crawling " through my work 

 since December somehow, feeling mentally too tired to do more than get through my routine 

 teaching and making no attempt beyond the day's necessary doings. My helpers go forward but 

 I can only look on. I suppose one must pay eventually for all overwork, only one longs for a 

 few more years to "finish up." Yes, I have settled on the American Lectures on Heredity 

 and Variation for October. If any ideas on diagram-illustration occur to you, I should be very 

 glad of suggestions. I have found a Genometer based on a suggestion of yours very useful at 

 more than one popular lecture. It contains a gigantic lifeguardsman, a diminutive sailor and 

 a " mean " man and illustrates the effect of any number of ancestors or collaterals of these types 

 by means of a string working up and down. It always amuses people. 



You will share my pleasure in the acceptance of the Homotyposis paper for the Phil. Trans. 

 I hope we may float Biometrika so that one could to some extent relieve the pressure on the 

 R.S. space, which I think is to some extent grudged. We bad however only about 12 English 

 acceptances, and we cannot venture even a first number without something like 100. We are 

 BOW circularising everybody in America, Germany and Italy, but I am not very hopeful. 



I suppose the Riviera is hardly a place where birds' eggs abound 1 I want to measure 

 another 100 clutches of some species but hardly know which to select or where to go for it. 



* [Galton wanted a medical examination such as the better insurance offices insist on 

 extended to all classes of the nation. My suggestion was that a grading of lives was essential 

 to a really sound national provision for sickness and old age pensions, proposals for which 

 were then creating some stir. K. P.] 



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